New here! Thinking of putting NetBSD on an RPi4...

mhj

I'm new here, nice to meet everyone! I have been using *nix since at least 2009 on and off, but by 2014 I decided to commit to only running *nix based machines. On my main Intel NUC, I run Guix. On my laptop I run Void Linux. I have another desktop, and was thinking of putting NetBSD(It currently runs Win10, which I've only needed for school)on it, since NetBSD gets a lot traction in this community and I would like to learn it. I have experience with pretty much every BSD, just way less with Dragonfly, but I am always trying to learn more.

I was also thinking of putting NetBSD on an RPi4, and I was wondering if there were any caveats I should know about before committing to it. I downloaded Ebihara Jun's image. Currently I have FreeBSD 13 on one SD card for it, but I'd also like to try NetBSD on another SD card I have.

I also have a Pinebook Pro and also another SBC that uses a Rockship board, but the Pinebook Pro just feels off when using NetBSD on it, probably because I didn't install it to the eMMC. So yeah.

Also, another thing about myself. I am currently in school for technical writing, but I am thinking of switching to cyber security. Could the BSDs help me to learn more about cyber security? Anyone with a degree in it here?

Thanks!

yeti

TL;DR: Please drop a message here when your⁽⁰⁾ 9.99.x on a Pi4 survived one or more updates these days.

The epic version...

I had/have that flavour of NetBSD-current on two Pi4s. In the beginning on µSD cards, then I reinstalled it on external USB3 SSDs. It ran fine for months and over several self-build.sh-ed updates until an update killed⁽¹⁾ both SSDs and I haven't looked at it since then. I have kept the µSD cards from before that incident to somewhen re-NetBSD-ing⁽²⁾ the now idling SSDs.

I hope these problems are fixed now or soon, but with a long to do list, I haven't retried it yet. Getting green lights about 9.99.x/arm64 surviving updates now, would push retrying it lots of positions upwards on my growing (™dark energy inside™) to do list.

——————————
0: This 'you' shall not mean only the thread owner, please read it as 'you, the reader, with 9.99.x on a Pi4'.
1 : One SSD was 'killed' by sysupgrade with downloaded kernel and sets, the other one showed the same problem after sysupgrade from a self-build.sh-ed release set of the same date. Probably only the boot process got screwed, and RasPIan had some problems too around those days, so maybe that was related, and not even purely a NetBSD problem?
2: After the SSDs were screwed up, I tried Pi4-Devuan3, but that was meant as interlude only.
3⁽⁴⁾: What about starting a wiki page to concentrate notes about NetBSD on Pi stuff in one place?
4: Yip! Footnote 3 has no mention in the main text! 😇

nia

@mhj

On the RPI4 you need to run -current and use the UEFI firmware. Download the zip, extract it to a FAT32-formatted SD card, write a generic NetBSD -current arm64 image to a USB drive, insert both into the Pi.

@yeti

There are people running NetBSD on RPI4 in data centres for months. I have never heard of it "killing" a drive until now. If you believe it's a bug that needs fixing you should report it with good diagnostic information.

3⁽⁴⁾: What about starting a wiki page to concentrate notes about NetBSD on Pi stuff in one place?

There is a wiki page:

https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/

mhj

nia

nia On the RPI4 you need to run -current and use the UEFI firmware. Download the zip, extract it to a FAT32-formatted SD card, write a generic NetBSD -current arm64 image to a USB drive, insert both into the Pi.

I see, thanks!

yeti

Two Pi4 using Pi4 images from the source mentioned @ thread start were unable to reboot after updates. I'd still have NetBSD on those SSDs if that had not been the case. The update itself ran without errors and after the update there was no reaction on the screen that gave any hints or errors. What should I have reported? Photos from an empty screen?

nia

yeti Actually if you run sysupgrade without changing the config it will install the wrong kernel, ARM uses GENERIC64. The kernel image format for non-UEFI Raspberry Pis is also different. I don't think that counts as trashing the disks, though...

yeti

nia Knowing the extra kernel things to do, I had several successful updates before that day (from self build kernel/set tars and from downloaded daily builds) for months. That must have been a different glitch. I'll revisit NetBSD on Pi4 somewhen. Currently some other things are crying louder for my attention.

mhj

BTW peeps, I ended up installing NetBSD 9.2 AMD64 over a Win10 install. Loving it so far, just have a couple of questions. I installed XFCE, firefox and a few other things. Do I need to copy over some rc.d files from anywhere or are already in my rc.d folder so I can use the service command and put the necessary options in rc.conf? I just mainly need to enable dbus, right? I'd also like some network services so I can browse samba shares from Thunar.... so do I need to install gvfs? Thanks!

mhj For dbus you need to cp /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/dbus /etc/rc.d/ and add dbus=YES to /etc/rc.conf.

But, for xfce you will need a few more. Maybe fam, intel-microcode-netbsd if you have an intel cpu and perhaps others depending on your needs.

mhj

pin
Thanks, I will look into all the options!

tcmart14

Does NetBSD on the Pi4 support the full 8GB yet? I just installed FreeBSD to mine and have not fully checked it out there, but if NetBSD supports the full 8, I know what I am doing this weekend.

yeti

tcmart14
https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=5862

tcmart14

yeti Thanks for the link! Look like it does, so I will have to give it a shot soon!

ojsaki

tcmart14 So that the 8GB is recognised you may need to press ESC to enter the UEFI configuration screens, then under the ‘Advanced Configuration’ screens for the Raspberry Pi menu item find the “Limit RAM to 3 GB” option and disable it, then reboot.
https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-arm/2020/06/09/msg006740.html
I had to do this with UEFI firmware v.1.22 on my 8GB RPi4.